Monthly Archives: January 2017

International Holocaust Remembrance Day — This past Friday (January 27) marked the observance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this event sparked me to reflect on my family’s connections to the Holocaust.  Everyone on my father’s side of the family came from the Jewish community in Warsaw, Poland.  A small group of them immigrated to New York City in the early years of the 20th century.  My great-grandparents were among those who fled the oppressive conditions in what was known as the Warsaw Ghetto, and they eventually became American citizens.  Many of their relatives, however, remained in Warsaw.

When I was a college student, my grandfather shared with me the story of what happened to his relatives who stayed in Warsaw.  He had just watched the famous mini-series Roots, and he thought that I should know something about my roots.  According to my grandfather, his relatives who remained in Warsaw were swept up in the tumultuous series of events known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  This celebrated act of Jewish resistance started on April 19, 1943, when the Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto refused to surrender to the Nazi forces who had come to the Ghetto to round up everyone and deport them to concentration camps.  Chaos ensued, and nearly every one from the Warsaw Ghetto was killed, including my relatives.  However, they died resisting Fascism, and my grandfather always took pride in that fact.  I do, too.

I think that it is important not only to remember the Holocaust, but also to become better informed about this nightmarish chapter in our history.  For those who want to know more about the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I recommend two books as good starting points.  Dan Kuzman’s The Bravest Battle:  The Twenty-eight Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an excellent historical account of the events related to the uprising. Leon Uris’s Mila 18 is a moving novel about the uprising and the story of the Jewish resistance fighters.  As both of these books make clear, it takes a great deal of courage to resist tyrants and bigots.  In remembering the Holocaust, we should also remember and honor those brave people who stood with the resistance.

Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.  Here is the latest news:

Katie Hogan‘s essay, “The Academic Slow Lane,” appears in the newly published collection, Staging Women’s Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces, edited by Michelle Masse and Nan Bauer-Maglin (SUNY Press, 2017).

Liz Miller is first author of a co-authored article titled “Exploring Language Teacher Identity Work as Ethical Self-Formation” that has just been published in the Modern Language Journal.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

February 3 — The 17th Annual English Graduate Student Association Conference will take place on February 3, 2017, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in the Cone Center Lucas Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — Like many Polish Jews who immigrated to America during the turn of the last century, my father’s grandparents settled in New York City.  However, before they established homes in New York City, they first passed through a famous immigration processing center located on an island.  What is the name of this island?

Last week’s answer: See below.

In addition to writing The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers wrote three other novels.  Can you complete the titles of her three other novels listed below?  

Celebrating the Centennial of Carson McCullers’s Birth — Copper Restaurant, known for its Indian food, is located just a few blocks from our home.  Whenever I walk our dog along East Boulevard, we pass by it as we get our exercise.  Our dog doesn’t seem to care that the famous novelist Carson McCullers lived in the building where Copper Restaurant is now located, but it matters to me.

McCullers and her husband rented an apartment in the building in 1937.  While living there, she began writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, her first novel.  She lived in Charlotte for just a year, but for those of us who are interested in Charlotte’s literary history, that’s long enough for us to claim her as a Charlotte writer and to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth on February 19, 1917.

As part of this celebration, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the Charlotte Film Society, and an organization called Charlotte Lit are presenting a film series showcasing three films based on McCullers’s novels.  The series kicks off on February 5, 2017, with a screening of the 1968 film version of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, starring Alan Arkin, Sondra Locke, and Cicely Tyson.  The film will be shown at 1:30 p.m. at ImaginOn’s Wells Fargo Playhouse.  After the screening there will be a panel discussion, and our own Paula Eckard is one of the panelists.   Paula is a charter member of the Carson McCullers Society, and she often includes McCullers’s novels in her courses on Southern literature.

For more information about the film series and the other events related to the centennial of McCullers’s birth, please click on the following link: http://www.charlottelit.org/carsonmccullers/

Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.  Here is the latest news:

Boyd Davis recently published a co-authored chapter titled “Challenges and Experiences in Training Multilingual, International Direct Care Workers in Dementia Care in the United States” in the edited volume Multilingual Interaction in Dementia. 

Lara Vetter recently published an afterword to a collection titled Modernist Women Writers and Spirituality:  A Piercing Darkness, co-edited by Elizabeth Anderson, Andrew Redford, and Heather Walton.

Debora Rae Wenger, a graduate of our M.A. program, was recently named one of the nation’s ten best journalism educators.  She is currently a professor at the University of Mississippi.  Please click on the following link for more information: http://hottytoddy.com/2017/01/20/wenger-professor-honored-nations-best/

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines.
January 27 — The English Department meeting will take place on January 27, 2017, from 11:00-12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

February 3 — The 17th Annual English Graduate Student Association Conference will take place on February 3, 2017, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in the Cone Center Lucas Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to writing The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers wrote three other novels.  Can you complete the titles of her three other novels listed below?

 
Reflections in a _______ Eye

The Member of the _________

_________ without Hands

Last week’s answer: Atlanta

In addition being a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, John Lewis has long served as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives.  His district encompasses most of what major city in the South?

John Lewis and Jim Zwerg

Reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King Day — A few years ago a student in my children’s literature course made an appointment to talk with me about her interest in doing an independent research project related to our class session on the history of African American children’s literature.  She was especially interested in nonfiction books for young people about the history of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.   She signed up for an independent study with me, and she and I met on numerous occasions to talk about her readings.  She introduced me to Freedom Riders:  John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement by Ann Bausum.  The student and I both read this book, and we agreed that it provides an excellent introduction to the history of the Civil Rights Movement and to two of the movement’s leaders, both of whom risked their lives to advocate for equality and freedom.  For her final project, this student interviewed Bausum, and I proudly published an excerpt of this interview in RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal.  

By introducing me to Bausum’s excellent book, this student underscored for me the lesson that learning is often a collaborative process.  Of course, students learn from their teachers, but it is also true that teachers can learn from their students.  By working together to learn new material and share discoveries and insights, we can sometimes break out of our individualistic concerns and come up with new and collaborative solutions to common problems.   As Dr. King once said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.  Here is the latest news:

Valerie Bright recently received a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies from UNC Greensboro.

Heather Vorhies recently published “Women and Corporate Communication in the Early American Republic” in Peitho Journal.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming events and deadlines.
January 27 — The English Department meeting will take place on January 27, 2017, from 11:00-12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

February 3 — The 17th Annual English Graduate Student Association Conference will take place on February 3, 2017, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm in the Cone Center Lucas Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition being a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, John Lewis has long served as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives.  His district encompasses most of what major city in the South?

Last week’s answer:

Ian Fleming–The Spy Who Loved Me

John le Carré–Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John le Carré, Roald Dahl, and Ian Flemming are all British writers who also worked as spies.  Listed below are three books written by one of these authors.  See if you can identify the author of each book.

Coming in from the Cold — As I made the frigid walk from the East Parking Deck to the Fretwell Building on this first day of the Spring 2017 semester, a phrase popped into my head the moment I felt the welcomed warmth of the building.  “Aah,” I said to myself, “the professor who came in from the cold.”  Then I started wondering where the phrase came from, and I remembered a spy novel that I read in college titled The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold came out in 1963, and the Cold War tensions are integral to the novel.  Spying, espionage, and subversive interventions in the political processes of nations all figure in this famous novel.   I remember being caught up in the fast-paced plot of the book, but what stuck with me was the way in which the novel addresses moral questions and concerns.  Lying is so central to the central character’s life that he hardly knows the difference between lying and telling the truth.   Needless to say, there is a lot about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold that relates to our current situation besides the cold temperatures.

Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.  Here is the latest news:

Juan Meneses presented a paper titled “Postcolonial Misrecognition in Jean Rhys’sVoyage in the Dark” at the MLA conference, which took place last week in Philadelphia.

Sarah Minslow published a chapter titled “Helping Children Understand Atrocities:  Developing and Implementing an Undergraduate Course Titled ‘War and Genocide in Children’s Literature'” in a the volume Understanding Atrocities:  Remembering, Representing, and Teaching Genocide.  The book was published Calgary University Press.

Jen Munroe presented a paper titled “Premodern Kitchen Ecologies: ‘Sustainable Becoming'” at the MLA conference in Philadelphia last week.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming events and deadlines.

January 16 — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day–University closed.

January 16 — The last day to add/drop with no grade.

January 27 — The English Department meeting will take place on January 27, 2017, from 11:00-12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — John le Carré, Roald Dahl, and Ian Fleming are all British writers who also worked as spies.  Listed below are three books written by one of these authors.  See if you can identify the author of each book:

The Spy Who Loved Me

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Going Solo

Last week’s answer: Larry Mellichamp

Jeffrey Gillman is the current Director of the Botanical Gardens.  Does anybody remember who served as the Director of the Botanical Gardens before Jeffrey?

Innovative Teaching — I do not usually make resolutions at the beginning of the new year, but this year I have resolved to write a bit more about teaching in my Monday Missives.  In my 33 years of teaching in the English Department, I have long been impressed with my colleagues’ innovative approaches to teaching.  Starting with today’s Monday Missive, I am going to celebrate some noteworthy examples of innovative teaching by members of our English Department.

Last semester Matthew Rowney took an innovative approach to teaching his students about ecocriticism.  Matt met with Jeffrey Gillman, the Director of Botanical Gardens at UNC Charlotte, and Jeffrey gave Matt a tour of the greenhouses and gardens.  In recounting this tour, Matt told me, “I told him about my Romantic ecocriticism course, in particular the author John Clare, who was himself an accomplished amateur botanist.  Given the importance of individual plants to Clare, I went through the texts assigned for the course and made a list of plants, and then forwarded these to Jeffrey, inquiring whether the garden contained any of them. Luckily, the gardens have many of the same or similar species. After reading Clare’s work and discussing his ecological vision, my class took a tour of the gardens, stopping to examine individual plants appearing in Clare’s work, and thinking about what seeing these plants within a larger habitat might contribute to how we understand Clare’s poetry.”

Jeffrey Gillman, Director, UNCC Botanical Gardens

An example of one of Clare’s poems that Matt connected to the gardens is “Emmonsail’s Heath in Winter.”  In this poem, there are two lines that relate to an ash tree.  One of the lines reads, “Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.” There are three ashes that stand together in the gardens, near where the forest area connects with the Asian garden.  Matt showed these ash trees to his students and asked them to imagine the trunks of these trees as a resting place for a weary traveler.

By bringing his students into the garden and relating the plants in the garden to Clare’s poetry, Matt helped his student develop a deeper appreciation of these poems’ intrinsic connections to the natural world.

RD News — As we start the Spring 2017 semester, two of our faculty members are about to experience changes as a result of being awarded an RD (Reassignment of Duties).  Paula Connolly will return to teaching after having spent the fall semester working on a research project, and Ralf Thiede is about to take a semester-break from teaching in order to work on a research project.

During her RD, Paula worked on Stories about Slavery, an anthology of U.S. literature published for children between 1790 and 1865. The anthology contains pro- and anti- slavery selections (with many that fall in a spectrum between the two). While the anthology could function as a companion to her earlier critical study, Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010, most of the anthology contains new material not previously discussed and only available in rare book rooms. Some of the different groupings of literature include “slave narratives,” “alphabets,” and even “schoolbooks: mathematics” where Confederate children learned how to figure the price of slaves they were expected to one day own. Her goal is to offer historical and literary contexts for the pieces as guideposts, but to keep critical intervention to a minimum so readers can explore the literature–particularly in terms of its racial ideologies–on their own.

For his RD, Ralf will work on project in which he can combine his backgrounds in linguistics, cognitive science, and literature. He is writing a book on the linguistics of children’s literature. He is working within an emerging new paradigm in neuroscience that focuses not so much on brain areas but on the pathways between them and how they develop over time in infants and children, changing their thinking. He then matches the successive processing profiles with what the language of children’s literature can offer at each developmental stage that is not already present in how adults talk to children. He has already completed his study of how babies acquire and produce speech sounds and how authors like Dr. Seuss support that development with noises (Mr. Brown Can Moo!), rhyme, rhythm, anticipation, engaging repetition, funny-sounding words (S-L-U-R-R-R-P), and surprising violations (thnead is definitely not a possible sound combination in English) that trigger the child’s instinct to explore.  Ralf will look at interactive book readings between adult readers and preliterate children to describe linguistic collusions among child, adult, protagonist, and author.

Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.  Here is the latest news:

Alan Rauch recently gave a presentation titled “Rethinking A Christmas Carol as a Malthusian Parable” as one of the community salons organized by Twig Branch.

Angie Williams recently launched a blog titled It Is What It Is:  Life as a Parent, Grandmother, and Caregiver.  Her is the link to her blog:  https://pages.charlotte.edu/angie-williams/updates/

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

January 9 – The first day of classes for the Spring 2017 semester is January 9.

Quirky Quiz Question — Jeffrey Gillman is the current Director of the Botanical Gardens.  Does anybody remember who served as the Director of the Botanical Gardens before Jeffrey?

Last week’s answer: Epistolary

In thinking about the term “missive,” I am reminded that some novels are told through a series of letters (or missives).  What is the term that is generally used for such novels?